External Hard Drive

[Ballinlea]

I’m not sure if this is the correct place for this.
Recently my son was setting up a flash drive for a clean install of Windows on his computer. Some how it went on to an external hard drive which we use for mostly videos and photographs. It created a new partition leaving all the original files in an unallocated section of the drive. I have looked at the drive and can see the unallocated space with all the files still there. How do we bring back the unallocated space? The Windows boot partition is not required. I am writing this on my MacBook and have the drive attached to my Windows Laptop.
Thanks

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon..
@Bruce @Rustys

[Bruce]

If the space on the drive is unallocated, how are you seeing the files? What software are you using to see those files?

and I’m wondering how the partition was made to be unallocated by the installation process. Because if it was reformatted, you’d be seeing no files.

you could try Recuva, but it needs a drive letter assigned to the partition. Do you could quick format it which would leave behind all your data then run Recuva to see what it could find and recover.

let me guess, these files were not saved anywhere else???

[jmarket]

Yes as per Bruces response, you should not see anything on an unallocated partition? You could possibly install Mini tool partition wizard on the windows pc and investigate that a bit more. It will allow partitions to be manipulated a little simpler than Windows. Would suggest you do that under some guidance.

Again as per Bruces comment, and I am sorry, but data that is not backed up is data you don’t care about.

When you get this sorted, and it may well be able to be, develop a backup regime.

[phillpower2]

Any update Ballinlea?

[phillpower2]

Thread closed due to lack of any feedback from the OP.